


Your First Memory Of All

by Sylphidine_Gallimaufry



Series: NDU - Relative Values [2]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Guardians of Childhood & Related Fandoms, Nightmare Dork University - Fandom, Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Human, Cats, Gen, Nightmare Dork University, Pitch loves his cat Purradox, Sibling Rivalry, Sweet, Teenage Pitch Black, strange fruit from a twisted tree, thank goodness for kind relatives, this is a shameless kitty fluff story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2019-03-16 14:34:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13638222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sylphidine_Gallimaufry/pseuds/Sylphidine_Gallimaufry
Summary: A wee black kitten is plucked from a burning building, protected in a pocket that was bigger on the inside, taken for a ride in a limousine, and placed gently in the hands of the person who needed her the most.





	Your First Memory Of All

**Author's Note:**

> This series is a subset of my other series [Tales of Nightmare Dork University](http://archiveofourown.org/series/577933). See the series notes and description there for a starting point.

## **************************

It was important to Pitch Black in that moment to remember that he was fifteen years old.

Fifteen, for heaven's sake, not five.  He was almost an adult, not a toddler.

Too old to be whining like a toddler to his godfather Gilen Black, his father’s second cousin, whining that just  _once_  he’d like to have a birthday present that he didn’t have to share with Piki.

Particularly when the realization finally hit Pitch that he was actually GETTING Uncle Gilen’s full attention at this moment… that in a room full of relatives being entertained by his parents, someone was listening to and talking to him and him alone.  And someone NOT talking to him about Piki.

Pitch could have bitten his tongue.  Fortunately Uncle Gilen seemed not to notice; he was cool that way.  It was a Black family thing, to be able to ignore things one found distasteful, but his uncle made it seem more like suave good manners than like arrogant disdain.

Uncle Gilen shifted on the highbacked sofa suddenly, almost if something had poked him.  He stood up and stretched, then put his right hand into the pocket of his tweed jacket.

The pocket  _mewed._

Pitch looked up at his uncle in disbelief.  Uncle Gilen’s lined face might have seemed impassive, but the crinkles at the corners of his eyes showed that he was hiding a grin.  “I’m going to see whether there’s any more club soda in the pantry; your father always puts too much sugar in these.  Care to give me a hand?”  He adroitly picked up his gold-leafed Collins glass, caught the eye of his wife Annelle across the room, raised his glass to her, and then headed out of the parlor with Pitch at his heels.

## **************************

_Fifteen years old, insistent upon walking to a drumbeat different to that of his sibling, constantly raging, definitely internally, sometimes out loud [but not by choice] that everything always came so easily to CERTAIN OTHER PEOPLE, including things CERTAIN OTHER PEOPLE had not earned._

Gilen Russell Black remembered his own teen years all too well.

He remembered what it felt like to constantly be held to an impossible standard, one where he’d never, ever measure up.  

He knew what his godson Pitch was experiencing during an event that was supposed to be a celebration for him as well as for Pitch’s twin Piki.  While his older sister “Cruel-llah” Talullah’s birthday was not on the same day as his, it WAS in the same month, and too often his own relatives had thought it cute to combine their parties despite the two years difference in age.

Talullah had been useful for one thing in her life, though; she’d introduced him to Annelle Deauville-Sands, and for that he had to give her kudos.

Gilen grinned at the thought of what his sister’s probable reaction would have been if SHE had been the one to encounter the strange man who had bumped into him on the sidewalk outside the hotel that morning.  Talullah certainly would not have found a Romantic poet wannabe, with flowing russet curls and a green velvet frockcoat, as amusing as Annelle did when she joined him in waiting for the car that would take them to the party.

And Talullah would have shrieked, rather than breaking into smiles, when the man started pulling kittens out of his pockets. 

## **************************

_You awoke from the nice nap you’d taken after you’d been moved from the snug sack of the one-who-saves to another, slightly smaller one.  You blinked your eyes sleepily and stretched, flexing your claws against something warm._

_Suddenly there was a people-paw in the sack with you.  While the people-paw did not smell the same as the people-paw of the one-who-saves, it had a safe smell all its own.  You responded using your Small Voice [no need to bring out the Big Voice until needed] and rubbed against the people-paw._

_Your rubbing seemed to have the result of your world moving.  While you were still comfortable in the snug sack, and the people-paw was rubbing you back in turn, you could tell that you were going to be somewhere else soon._

_And then you were._

## **************************

Gilen had almost made it past the dining room and into the pantry, Pitch at his heels, when the kitten decided she had other ideas.  She clawed up out of his jacket pocket, dropped lightly to the dining room rug, and sprinted into the pantry as though she had lived in a Black household all her life.

The man and the teenager tried to saunter nonchalantly after the dark streak so as not to attract attention from the other relatives still in the parlour.  Gilen closed the pantry door behind him and leaned against it, shaking with silent laughter.  Pitch had no idea how to react to this distinctly un-Black-like behaviour and settled for drawing himself up to his full height, crossing his arms over his chest, and raising an eyebrow at his uncle.

Finally Gilen got himself under control enough to speak, as the kitten nosed around the legs of the stools drawn up around the breakfast island.  “On my way over here, I had all these grandiose plans of how to pull a kitten out of my pocket and say, ‘Behold!’  It sounded good in my head, at any rate.”

## **************************

It was a flaming miracle that neither his parents’ housekeeper nor any relatives had been in the pantry when Pitch and his godfather made their escape there, following the tiny black furry arrow.

Uncle Gilen looked absently down at his Tom Collins glass and seemed to remember his excuse for sequestering them.  Without a word exchanged between them, the older man moved towards the refrigerator and Pitch took his place leaning against the pantry door to keep out any nosy interference.  

The kitten stopped her exploration of chair legs and emerged from their tangle to wander over the faux-brick-tiled floor.  Her meanderings brought her to a direct stop at Pitch’s shining dress shoes.  She sat upon her haunches, looked up and up and up at him, blinking in the bright light.

She then set a little black paw cautiously on his foot, in much the manner that Nanny Phoebe [one of the nannies that he and Piki had actually LIKED] would do with her hand on theirs, when either of the twins came back to the nursery in tears after a parental disappointment.

It was an uncanny feeling to have a small feline telling him “I’m here” without words. 

Pitch stood absolutely still.  He blinked back at her, transfixed.

The clink of ice, the slosh of liquid and the sound of a glass being set down on the marble counter broke the spell.  Pitch looked back up, startled, just in time to see Uncle Gilen transferring the black kitten from his narrow-palmed hands, with the traditional long Black fingers, to Pitch’s own long-fingered ones.   Instinctively Pitch held her cradled under her back legs with one hand, while loosely clasping her middle with the other.

The lonely teenager and the homeless kitten stared at one another at eye level, their irises almost the same exact shade of pale sherry.

The kitten gave a trill and reached out to pat Pitch’s prominent nose with the softest of touches, her pink pads smooth and velvety.

Pitch’s soft smile in return was a beauty to behold, all the moreso since it was sweet and spontaneous, neither the affected grimace nor the tightlipped sneer he normally displayed in mimicry of his parents.  

Uncle Gilen said quietly, “She seems to have made up her mind that you are hers.  The gentleman who was... abiding with her... thought she would gravitate towards a creative sort.”

The unstated-but-nevertheless-evident faith that his godfather had in him was the second-best present Pitch Black had ever received in his young life.

## **************************

##  **_A FEW YEARS LATER AT NDU_ **

When not napping, Purradox would generally spend long stretches of time looking out the freshman dorm window to the cheerless classroom buildings across the street.  She knew by the slant of the light when he would return each day to the room they shared.  

She knew the afternoons and nights when he was happy and he would have extra treats for her, by the lightly tapping, tripping footsteps approaching the door eagerly.

She knew the afternoons and nights when she would be needed to cheer him, by the dragging, shuffling footsteps that took forever to reach the door.

Blissful or sad, she would curl into him as he lay on the bed.  He would gently hold her paw and she would rest her chin on his hand as they both drifted off to sleep. 

She no longer remembered a time when Pitch had not been hers and she had not been his.

He was all that mattered.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Originally appeared on Tumblr in multiple parts.
> 
> Background and inspirational material can be found at <https://sylphidine.tumblr.com/post/170735269217/ndu-your-first-memory-of-all-authors-notes>.


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